"Presuppositionalism" is the name given to a special branch of Christian apologetics. In this blog, I will post my criticisms of presuppositionalism as it is informed and defended by apologists such as Greg Bahnsen, John Frame, Cornelius Van Til, Richard Pratt, and their latter-day followers.

Tuesday, March 06, 2012

Nide's 15

Christian apologist in-the-making Nide Corniell, who blogs and comments under the pseudonym “Hezekiah Ahaz,” continues to insist on playing the court jester. I recently posed 15 questions for Nide to consider (in the comments section of this blog), and he addressed them in his usual evasive and tirelessly adolescent manner (see here.)

Most of these are questions that I had posed to Nide earlier in our comment discussion but which he had resisted answering. Now we have his answers. Let’s take a look and see what he says.

I asked: “1. How does your worldview *account for* life?”

Nide quoted Gen. 2:7: "Then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being."

This doesn’t address the question. It only gives the biblical myth of how man came into being. It does not provide an *account for* life. Question: Is “the LORD God” supposed to be alive? Problem: If so, then appealing to said “LORD God” does not provide an *account for* life – you’re just pointing to something that’s already said to have life in order to *account for* life. Which means: You have no *account for* life. At best you have a go-nowhere tape loop. Seriously, this is Incinerating Presuppositionalism 101 stuff. Time to give up on this one.

I asked: “2. If life didn’t come from existence, where do you think it came from?”

Nide answered: “Look up.”

You seem to be affirming the view that “life didn’t come from existence,” since you’re consenting to there being some kind of alternative. But what am I supposed to “look up” to find an alternative to existence? Your god’s cloak? The only alternative to existence is non-existence. So putting your answers to 1 and 2 together, the inference that your god is non-existent is inescapable. But, we already knew that. Welcome to the truth! Let me show you around.

I asked: “3. Does your god have a brain? Yes or no.”

Nide answered: “No. Your God doesn't have any body parts.”

So I was right: you worship a brainless god. Why did you resist answering this question the first time I raised it?

I asked: “4. You had charged that ‘Rand was being arbitrary’. When are you going to support this claim?”

Nide answered: “I did already.”

No, in fact you didn’t. Go back and check the record: this is a charge that you affirmed, but never supported. I’m guessing you never will.

I asked: “5. If an algebra teacher drinks himself silly every night and beats his kids at home, is algebra false or “stupid” as a result of this? Yes or no?”

Nide replied: “No it's not stupid or false”

Okay, good. You agree with Objectivism then. Why was that so hard?

Nide continued: “but like I said this is a false analogy compared to the matter that was at hand.”

It’s not a “false analogy” by any means. I’ll help you to understand: If the Objectivist ethics are true, then they are true no matter what any particular individual *actually* does. In other words, pointing to someone’s particular actions will always be insufficient to show that the Objectivist ethics are wrong or false, just as pointing to any algebra teacher’s actions in the classroom or at home will always be insufficient to show that algebra is wrong or false. In terms of principle, we have a direct parallel here.

I asked: “6. If someone answers the question, ‘How do you know?’ with the statement, ‘We know without knowing how we know’, do you think this answer indicates that the one who said it has anything valuable to say about knowledge?”

Nide answered: “I gave you John Frame's contact info. Call him and then get back to us.”

I see, afraid to give your own assessment here? Why is that? When we get to the same issue in Question 10, we’ll see that you said “it’s called begging the question.” Should I tell John Frame that you think he was begging the question?

I asked: “7. Do Christians die?"

Nide replied: “Nobody dies.”

Really? So what are hospital morgues for? What are mortuary services for? What are cemeteries for? The bible itself affirms that people die. Very strange, Nide. You’re trying so hard to be slippery, but it’s such a juvenile effort.

I asked: “8. How does one determine whether or not he is ‘thinking God’s thoughts after him’? Please explain the steps you would take to make this determination.”

Nide replied: “Reading the bible and then applying it.”

It’s so simple a caveman could do it. And from what you describe here, it sounds like it’s something the believer does himself - by his own choices and effort. When you “think God’s thoughts after him,” are you in control of your thinking, or is your god in control of your thinking? It all sounds like you’re trying, from the vantage of a fallible and non-omniscient mind, to conform your thoughts to those of an infallible and omniscient mind that you can only apprehend in your imagination. How is fallible and non-omniscient effort supposed to somehow mirror the thinking of an infallible and omniscient mind?

Indeed, the formula which you propose seems only to open the flood gates to all the hundreds and thousands of varieties of Christian theology which circulate in the religious marketplace, including brands that have been deemed to be “heretical” by other brands. According to your proposed formula, anyone who is “reading the bible” can claim that he’s “applying it” and thereby “thinking God’s thoughts after him,” thus providing the seal of authenticity (given the formula you have outlined) to whatever view he ends up affirming as a result. And yet they’re in direct disagreement and conflict with others claiming to do the same. Wow, I’m glad these aren’t my problems!

I asked: “9. What is your proof that I can think without a brain?”

Nide answered: “The bible.”

Where does the bible say that Dawson Bethrick can think without a brain? I haven’t read that, and yet you say that the bible provides proof that I can think without a brain. I admit this is all very hard to take this seriously. And even if the bible did state this, how would that constitute a proof? It would only be an instance of the very claim which needs to be proved in the first place. Needs work.

I asked: “10. If a Christian apologist challenges a non-believer to explain how he knows something he has affirmed, and the non-believer replies by saying, ‘We know without knowing how we know’, do you think there’s anything wrong with this? Yes or no. Please explain your answer.”

Nide replied: “Yea, it's called begging the question.”

I see. So, John Frame was begging the question when he stated “We know without knowing how we know”? (See here.)

I’m curious though. Can you show how this statement – “We know without knowing how we know” – is an instance of “begging the question”? Do you know what this fallacy is? Your statements continually leave me in doubt on this matter.

Perhaps John Frame was simply “thinking God’s thoughts after him.” And yet here you’re implying that this amounts to “begging the question.” Man, you’re all over the place!

I asked: “11. Do you agree with the Objectivist principle that man needs values in order to live? Yes or no.”

Nide replied: “No.”

Okay, there we have it: Nide thinks man does not need values in order to live. This could only mean that man does not need morality, on Nide’s view. Wow. Just wow!

Nide continued: “Men need Jesus Christ in order to live.”

I see. So, “Jesus Christ” is not a value. Indeed, I do not value Jesus Christ, and I live like few others ever have. See the proof?

I asked: “12. How do you know you’re saved?”

Nide replied: “Because I recognize my moral depravity, and in light of that, I turn to God as my only hope.”

I see. You did the recognizing, and you did the turning. It was all your own doing. Your salvation is all “me, me, me.” It’s clear: you saved yourself! Got it.

Nide continued: “God does not reject a broken heart and spirit.”

Of course not: an imaginary being doesn’t do anything except what its imaginer imagines it does in the confines of his imagination.

Has your god rejected me? If so, then I must not have “a broken heart and spirit,” but rather an intact heart and a completely healthy spirit. Got it.

I asked: “13. Do you have ‘the mind of Christ’ (cf. I Cor. 2:16)? Yes or no.”

Nide replied: “Yep,”

Okay, good – an unequivocal answer (so far, anyway). Let’s remember that Christ is supposed to be a member of the trinity. Many Christians come out and say outright that Christ is “God.” And the Christian god is supposed to be an infallible and omniscient mind, right?

Nide continued: “it means we can now obey God. Just like Christ did.”

So you’re going to allow yourself to be whipped, beaten and crucified, just as the Christian god allowed its “only begotten son” to be whipped, beaten and crucified? I’m reminded of the kamikaze pilots of WWII: very self-destructive.

I asked: “14. Is ‘the mind of Christ’ omniscient? Yes or no.”

Nide replied: “Besides that this is a falliciously complex question,”

How is asking whether or not “the mind of Christ” is omniscient “a falliciously complex question”? It seems that either a mind is omniscient or it isn’t omniscient. Unless there’s some third alternative (the excluded middle, perhaps????), the question seems perfectly legitimate.

Nide continued: “No, Christians aren't omniscient.”

Yes, that’s pretty obvious. So how do we square this fact with the notion that Christians also claim to have “the mind of Christ”? Perhaps they really don’t have “the mind of Christ”? Also, how do we square the fact that Christians aren’t omniscient with the claim that they “think God’s thoughts after him”? I’d say this is another instance of a Christian in double trouble.

I asked: “15. When are you going to do something about that bad smell over at your blog? Seriously, it really stinks over there.”

Nide replied: “I should have kept you out.”

But you invited me over. Several times in fact. Now that I’ve come over and discovered that awful smell, you express regrets. What happened?

So there you have it. Nide’s self-stultifying antics have been exposed yet again. Will this deter him? Of course not. A court jester delights in playing the fool. In fact, Nide seems particularly bent on honing his signature expertise in foolishness. It all just goes to underscore the fact that, here at IP, Christians are the entertainment.

45 Comments:

As to #3: Trinity claims god has no body parts. But doesn't his Storybook tell us that Jesus sits at the *right hand* of the father.

No body parts, yet a right hand... hmmm. Okay. Is this *right hand* literal or figurative?

I guess when imagination and the products thereof, lie at the base of one's view of the world, then one can just throw stuff out, willy-nilly. Then, when called on it, one can simply shore it up with even more imaginative rationalizations.

"I’m curious though. Can you show how this statement – “We know without knowing how we know” – is an instance of “begging the question”? Do you know what this fallacy is? Your statements continually leave me in doubt on this matter."

"I guess when imagination and the products thereof, lie at the base of one's view of the world, then one can just throw stuff out, willy-nilly. Then, when called on it, one can simply shore it up with even more imaginative rationalizations."

"Dawson said.... "So I was right: you worship a brainless god. Why did you resist answering this question the first time I raised it?"love it! Yes a disembodied consciousness is a contradiction in terms."

Anyway to how I know, simple consciousness is a process, not a physical thing unto itself but something a physical object , namely the human brain does. Thus just as it is a contradicting to have the process of driving without also having the required car or digestion without the required stomach it is a contradiction to have thinking, ie consciousness without a brain to do the the thinking. Your Mind is not your brain, it is your brain in action, it is a process. This have been covered before. If you doubt the truth of this I suggest you check out the following links

Over on Trinity Dick's blog, he is carrying on an exchange with "imnotandrei." In their exchanges, Trinity is clearly outmatched. But I noticed at one point Trinity writes: "without faith no reasoning or knowledge can happen."

This is quite a statement, because months ago on this blog (correct me if I'm wrong), Trinity wrote that the imaginary being which he worships does not have (or was it need) "faith."

Does this mean that the invisible magic being that Trinity worships cannot reason or have knowledge?

Let's see him try to plug this gaping hole in his theology, while we sit here, quite entertained, at watching him open another one up elsewhere.

This is the kind of thinking that happens when you have committed yourself to believing in Conversational Donkeys.

Well, Nide, I never thought I’d see the day when you’d pull a Dustin Segers and remove an entire blog entry from your site. Quite a change of mind there. Was your conscience bothering you?

You suggest that I don’t “want to deal with [you] honestly,” which is quite a charge. In fact, I’d suggest by return that you need to shoulder your responsibility in this. I can only respond to what you do in fact say, and tie the sum of what you say together to get any kind of integrated view from your own words. That’s not me being dishonest – that’s me trying to decipher what you are saying when you say something while keeping in mind other things you have said. So I think you need to do some soul-searching here and examine how you dialogue with others. You might find that there are patterns in your conversation which very much appear to be deliberate ruses on your end which you deploy to keep your position slippery and your interlocutors off-balance. These patterns have been exposed numerous times, and not only by me – for sure not only by me!

You’ll also note that I have never taken down a post from my blog after publishing. You’ll have to explain what that feels like, for I don’t know. I’m always excited about what I post on my blog. You see, it’s a labor of love for me.

As for your god being imaginary, I’ve presented my support for this verdict time and time again. You seem unwilling to deal with what I’ve actually stated on the matter. There are reasons for this evasion, but I expect that it will be very difficult for you to get to the heart of those reasons if you continue in your efforts to evade the truth. Ridiculing me will get you only so far, and it’s down a road that is not in your best interests as an adult thinker. So it seems you need to make some hard decisions about yourself going forward.

#1 If by accounting is meant an explanation dependent upon a scientific model that relies upon observation and induction, then Christianity and its deluded apologists have no capability of providing any accounting that does not entail stolen concept fallacies. Besides, answering a mystery with another mystery accomplishes nothing. Christians can neither define their God nor life.

#2 Looking up will only direct one’s vision to our cosmic domain. Nide perhaps thinks Jesus is up in the sky. But didn’t Yuri Gagarin put the kibosh on that idea. When he, as the first man to orbit our planet in space, looked and looked about but didn’t see any God up there.

#3 Does God have a brain? Is Nide a Trinitarian Christian, is so he must believe Jesus to be 1/3 of God and to be both fully God and fully man. If it were the case that consciousness had priority over what we would then only be able to nominally assume was existence and that JC had a brain, then God would have a brain. If Nide is an Arian Christian, then he is a heretic to nominal Christianity and would be excommunicated from any mainstream Church requiring its members to profess one of either Nicene, Athanasian, or Apostles Creed. On the other hand if Nide thinks his God to be an immaterial transcendent consciousness, then he has huge insurmountable problems to maintain pretense of any rational basis for his faith.

#4 Rand’s positions logically follow in workman like order from her starting points. The same goes for other competent O-ist philosophers.

#5 Good and proper analogy because objective moral facts do exist. Nide knows this every time he eats, breaths, drinks, eliminates, sleeps, dresses, goes to work to earn a paycheck because he also knows his own life is the standard of value by which he actually lives.

#6 If induction did not work and if God were to exist, then God, having to be omniscient, could not know its miracles would be efficacious, that its powers or knowledge were unlimited such that it could not know it was God and consequently it could neither be omniscient or exist. On the other hand, if existence has metaphysical primacy over existence, then induction works and God is impossible.

#7 If nobody dies, then Jesus did not die and all versions of Christian Soteriology are delusions.

#8 What about all other religion’s sacred literature? Is the Quran, Book of Mormon, Torah, Bhagadvata, Buddhavacana and Buddhist texts and so forth not the Word of God? Why would members of the world’s other great religions think Nide’s arrogant, condescending, patronizing religio-centrism indicative of any divine influence?

#9 Nide should study 1 Cor. 15 again. If Paul wrote that stuff, then he taught that humans would be resurrected from death into a super body with definite material composition. Paul did not teach the doctrine that humans have minds of pure consciousness. Nide is indeed a heretic. Yet he feels not the slightest bit of conviction from the alleged Holy Spirit for his sins. Wouldn’t that be fairly strong evidence that there is no H.S. about to convict Nide of his willful violations of his God’s will, for God, so we are told by mainstream Christianity, wants Nide to submit to the authority of the Church for discipleship. Part of which is to conform to accepted Church catechism.

#10 Nide, don’t ever change. You are so very entertaining. I’m sure you’d be an effective street preacher. Just think of all those you could lead to Christ with you razor sharp wit and keen intellect. Besides those waiting for a bus or train really don’t have the option of bugging out from the stop or station. They’re a natural audience.

#11 Wait, just a god-enog minute. Above Nide said nobody dies. That included his boy, JC. Without a Soteriology there is no atonement, or redemption, or ransom, or bloody sacrifice. Then Nide’s statement must reflect the doctrine of Patripassianism and is yet a more serious heresy, and yet no conviction from the H.S.!

#12 Nide could only do that if induction works.

#13 By what means does Nide have the mind of Christ? And what number is written on my computer’s service tag?

#14 Nide needs to go to Christian evasion school or at least learn to throw out several insults or condescending innuendos when confronted with difficult questions that paint him into a corner.

#15 Its hard for anyone to put up with the likes of Nide, but Dawson, unlike most, see this as an opportunity to present rather than hike into the arid flame war desert.

Trinity wrote: "Unlike Ydemoc who runs around like a little mouse commenting on others blogs but can't find the man in him to come to my blog. He's been busy alright."

Have I vexed you? You seem vexed. Why would anyone ever get vexed? It seems such a trivial emotion.

Anyway, leave it to you to compare me to a mouse that comments. I guess when one truly believes in and is forced to defend absurdities, merely because said absurdities happen to be written down in some so-called "Holy" 2000-year-old Storybook; absurdities such as Conversational Donkeys, Chit-Chatty Snakes, and City-Strolling Corpses, which no historian bothered to make a contemporaneous reportage of -- even though such copses were seen by many... then I suppose it's not much of a stretch for that person who believes in and defends such absurdities to assert and believe also that mice can make comments.

I am quite busy actually, but I take breaks now and then, like the one I'm taking now. And when I do, I like to wander over and see what people are saying on the various blogs.

As for commenting on your blog? Well, it seems you and those who engage you, are already doing fantastic job of showing -- to any rationally-minded fence-sitter's satisfaction -- that the basis for your worldview, and absolutely nothing at all, look so very much alike. So why bother?

Trinity wrote: "When ever you are ready to man up come by. We can talk then."

Thanks. If the lofty standard you've set for "man[ning] up" is visiting and commenting on your blog, I'm afraid I'm going to have to disappoint you -- at least until you begin to "spell up" "grammar up" "think up" "integrate up" "honest up" "make more sense up" and "reality up."

Thank you for your kind words. I appreciate your contributions to these debate blogs and have benefited from not only your thoughts but those of almost all O-ists I've had the pleasure of reading and especially Dawosn's stuff.

A reader posted a claim that physicists and cosmologists Borde, Guth, and Vilenkin proved the universe had to have had a beginning. Victor Stenger refuted this William Lane Craing crowed claim by asking Vilenkin and University of California–Santa Cruz physicist Anthony Aguirre who disputed the BGV hypothesis in a paper Crain ignored. To counter The Secular Walks post, I provided a 4096 character quote from the kindle edition of Fallacy of Fine Tuning.

I just wanted to draw your attention something "imnotandrei" wrote in an exchange with Trinity over on: http://hezekiahahaz.blogspot.com/2012/03/greatest-lesson-ever-taught-besides.html#comment-form

"Your [Trinity's] only hope in this argument is to make people doubt themselves, tear them down (as you said above), and then offer them a cure for a problem they didn't have before you started. Because your God offers them *nothing* they didn't have before you started."

I found this to be a great reminder that theists are nothing more than spiritual vampires who use skepticism to destroy man's mind with doubt, and then feed off these moments of weakness to satisfy their thirst for the imaginary.

I kind of liked this little nugget I just came upon over at "Debunking Christianity":

PZ Myers: "Faith: No one word personifies the absolute worst and most wicked policies of religion better than that. Faith is mind-rot -- it's a poison that destroys critical thinking, undermines evidence, and leads people into lives dedicated to absurdity. It's a parasite that's regarded as a virtue. I speak as a representative of the scientific faction of atheism here -- it's one thing we simply cannot compromise on. Faith is wrong, and at the same time faith is a central tenet of just about every religion on the planet. We can't ignore that -- that's the thing we are interested in fighting."

Faith: It really is the only way for somebody to rationalize the notion of "Conversational Donkeys."

Faith is the great file-folder of rationalization, where believers place all the absurdities they force themselves to believe in.

Is it any wonder we haven't seen any kind of reasonable response from Trinity to explain his belief in "Conversational Donkeys"? It all boils down to something called "faith," which is just the anti-conceptual offshoot of accepting and then rationalizing the belief in the existence of an invisible magic being. It is that magical concept that theists invoke in their attempt to bridge the insurmountable gap between that which one wishes, hopes, imagines, or believes to be true, and that which is true. And it is really just a bridge to nowhere.

I encourage everyone to read Trinity's latest. As you do, keep it firmly in mind that not only have I answered (months ago on this blog) his nonsensical criticisms of the passage he cites from Ayn Rand's "Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology," but also that the inanity he displays comes from someone whose agenda is driven by the Storybook requirement to believe in "Conversational Donkeys" "Chit-Chatty Snakes" and "City-Strolling Corpses." So no matter what the evidence has shown, does show, or ever will show, he must always believe these things are true.

His site, his posts, and his exchanges with others, make for a fascinating and entertaining case-study on the lengths an irrational mind will go in its attempt to make the arbitrary come true.

Yes. Trinity seems to have no qualms misrepresenting and fabricating things.

I find his behavior common among many Christians with whom I've had contact with. Unable to mount a reasonable defense for such notions as a Chit-Chatty Snake, a Conversational Donkey, and City-Strolling Corpses; incapable of offering any basis in reality for the invisible magic beings they've convinced themselves to believe in, they succumb to the indwelling of rationalization, which is needed to mount a defense. Trinity's carnival-like sideshow is and continues to be a manifestation of this rationalizing.